Abstract
This chapter offers a perspective on how agricultural education, research, and extension services address educational challenges and foster food security and sustainability in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. In the last two decades, significant progress has been made in Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates regarding agricultural education infrastructure and human capital development. However, agricultural education in the GCC countries face challenges, including stagnant enrollment, the need to offer more diverse programs, and enhanced education quality to satisfy the job market demand for qualified professionals. There is a need to formulate policies and initiatives to address the challenges facing agricultural education programs, research, and agricultural extension services. Graduates of agricultural higher education institutions must be trained and learn to be capable leaders to satisfy the needs for agricultural development, achieve food security goals and sustainability, and be industry entrepreneurs.
TopBackground
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries include the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sultanate of Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain. The GCC countries are capital-rich and have no foreign exchange limitation for food imports. The countries benefit from increased oil and gas prices to support economic development and stability. However, all GCC countries are net food importers, which adds more risk and uncertainty regarding food availability and price stability. The share of the agriculture sector to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the GCC countries in 2018 were 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, 2.2, 2.4, and 12.2% in Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman, respectively -Table 1. In the GCC countries, the value of food imports increased from 8 billion U.S. Dollars in 2002 to 53 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. The GCC countries experience physical water scarcity, and high soil and land salinity levels, which necessitates efficient water resource management, as water extraction and use have exceeded sustainable limits. These facts indicate a need for agricultural education, research, and extension of institutions’ services to address water scarcity, food security risk, and overall food and agricultural sustainability challenges in these countries (Faures et al., 2012).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Biocapacity (BC): The calculation of a country’s biocapacity begins with the total amount of bio-productive land and sea and refers to areas of land and water that support significant photosynthetic activity and biomass accumulation.
Institutional Learning Outcome (ILO): Institutional learning outcomes are the knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes that students are expected to develop due to their overall experiences with any aspect of the college, including courses, programs, and student services.
Course Learning Outcome (CLO): Course learning outcomes (CLOs) are central to your course's curriculum. They articulate to students, faculty, and other stakeholders what students will achieve in each course and how their learning will be measured.
Food Security: Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
Ecological Footprint (FT): The most straightforward way to define ecological footprint would be to call it the impact of human activities measured in the area of biologically productive land and water required to produce the goods consumed and to assimilate the wastes generated.
Learning Outcome Assessment: Learning outcome assessment is the process of systematically collecting evidence that indicates the extent to which students learning has occurred and matches predefined expectations.